The invention relates to a tile which can be shaped when cold in order to take on a non-flat configuration, and also to a process which produces the tile.
The invention is usefully applied in tiles or slabs of all types of materials. In particular the invention is applicable to ceramic tiles, for slabs or tiles made of marble, natural stone and stone materials in general.
In the realization of tiled floors using tiles or slabs, skirting is frequently laid using the same tiles or slabs which have been used for the floor itself. It is therefore common to use (for the skirting) portions of the tiles or slabs cut to a desired size. The portions are then laid or glued to the wall one next to another along the perimeter of the floor or floor covering, with a perpendicular lie plane to the tiles or slabs forming the floor or floor covering.
This process is rather long and laborious due to the tile-cutting operations and the laying thereof, neither of which is immune to imprecision. Cutting same-size pieces of tile is problematic, and since the resulting pieces tend to be small, laying operations are often fraught with difficulty.
The prior art includes other processes for realizing corner finishing involving floor/covering couplings with ceramic tiles, one of which processes consists in realizing special products formed by pressing or drawing and subsequently firing them.
The main aim of the present invention is to obviate the drawbacks in the prior art by providing a tile which can be modelled while in the cold state, in order to take on a non-flat configuration which is constructionally simple and easy to apply.
The invention also provides a process for modelling tiles into predetermined non-flat shapes which is particularly simple and economical.